Position in chronology
Adab 0800 + 1011
About this tablet
An Old Akkadian ledger from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), roughly 2300–2150 BCE, recording disbursements of milled barley — groats — measured in the standard gur. A scribe listed a string of named men, most receiving the same fixed amount of 1 gur and 2 barig (a bit over 300 litres), with the merchant sector named at the head of the account. The tablet is now two joined fragments in Chicago; the lower half is badly eroded, so the later names survive without their figures, and the closing line that would have named the source or the responsible office is broken away.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley, milled into groats, measured by the standard gur, issued to the merchants. Ur-Ninsun, Lugal-kesz, Ur-Ištaran and Di-Utu each take 1 gur 2 barig. Then come Šu-na, Lugal-hili, Lu-lila, Edin-bi-še, Sipa-ane, Šeš-saga and a name that may read E-tum — but the amounts beside them have flaked away, and one further entry is illegible. The last line began to record where the grain came from, or who was accountable for it, and there the tablet breaks off.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[1 gur, x] of barley — groats — gur (measure), standard (measure), (for) the merchant(s). 1 gur 2 barig: Ur-Ninsun. 1 gur 2 barig: Lugal-kesz. 1 gur [2 barig]: Ur-Ištaran. [1 gur] 2 barig: Di-Utu. [...]: Šu-na. [...]: Lugal-hili. [...]: Lu-lila. [...]: Edin-bi-še. [...]: Sipa-ane. [...]: Šeš-saga. [...]: E-tum(?). [...] ... From/place of [...]
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[1(asz) x] sze nig2-ar3-ra gur si-sa2 ga-esz8# 1(asz) 2(barig) ur-nin-sun2# 1(asz) 2(barig) lugal-kesz3 1(asz) [2(barig)] ur-isztaran [1(asz)] 2(barig) di-utu [...] szu-na [...] lugal-hi-li# [...] lu2-lil-la [...] edin-bi-sze3 [...] sipa#-an-ne2 [...] szesz-sa6-ga [...] e2#?-tum# [...] x ki# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0800 + 1011. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P217531) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.